retrocomputing @lemmy.sdf.org d3Xt3r @lemmy.nz 10 mo. ago

A quick look back at BeOS, the PC operating system that tried to challenge Windows and Mac

www.neowin.net A quick look back at BeOS, the PC operating system that tried to challenge Windows and Mac

In 1995, another PC operating system launched its first version around the same time as Windows 95 was released. It was called BeOS, and it tried to become an alternative to Windows and Mac.

19 comments

This was a decent OS, came about in BeOS 5 when they started to run on intel. Just lacked apps. at least OS/4 Warp could run Windows apps, this was just a brand new OS with nothing yet. Shame it died out, but you can run an inspired version of it called Haiku.
- Yep. I ran it on my 450MHz Pentium III back in the day - was incredibly fast and felt so ahead of it's time, especially it's multimedia and multitasking performance, as well as the fast boot speeds. It was my second favorite OS back then.
  
  As it was explained to me, it could do full-motion video almost 30 years ago, it could switch around analog signals like cable TV and put them on screen in an app, it had ports for hardware hacking that you could control more low-level and directly. It was just better, by quite a lot. And Microsoft and network effects conspired to kill it before it got rooted and so it got thrown out with the trash.
  
  I recall rumors that when it came to version 10 of Mac OS, Apple knew they needed outside help, and the choice came down to BeOS on the one hand, or NeXT (including ol' Stevie J) on the other.
  
  I probably had some form of that at the time and was amazed that it could play two audio sources at the same time as well as have multiple running videos.
- There was actually 2 * more warp than that....
  
  I'll see myself out...
Man I loved BeOS. I had a Mac clone PowerPC, put BeOS on it and it was amazing. Really made everything else at the time feel dated and slow.
- Out of curiosity, did you use it as a daily driver? A friend of mine tried it out briefly, and it was pretty cool, but the lack of applications meant we couldn't really do anything with it (other than marvel at how cool it was). Did it eventually get applications developed for them? Like did they have an office suite?
  
  Gobe Productive was one of the best office suites around when it came out (as far as what I had to do). It was just so good. Other than that, I could email and browse the web. I was just starting to learn programming and The BeOS Bible was really helpful.
Gotta keep haiku alive
I installed it on my Power Macintosh 9500. I was young and couldn't properly evaluate, but I thought it was cool. This was when Copland was also cool. I also wanted to learn about Yellow Dog Linux, but couldn't find books on Linux at Borders. It booted to a prompt CLI and I didn't know what to do, so I nuked it. Imagine what tween nerds can access now. I'm jealous.
- Replying to self: I remember when computing was fun. I miss it.
I still have it installed (Haiku, actually) on a small 32-bit laptop that I boot occasionally just to marvel at how awesome it is.

A port to Arm or Risc V would be great, it seems like a natural match to small SBCs.
- Well, if you want "compile something unstable yourself," here is their official documentation for ARM64.
  
  And here is someone's progress report on porting to RISC-V. They seem to have started in 2021, so maybe they were successful.
  
  I read somewhere that the project is really hurting due to the original programmers having little to no time to devote to it, so I'm not expecting to run it on a Raspberry Pi anytime soon.
  
  I wish I could help, but I'm no programmer.
It was a PowerPC OS way before it was ever an (Intel x86) PC OS. First on dedicated hardware, later adding support for PowerPC Macs.

You've viewed 19 comments.